Seeking unconventional alliances and bridging innovations in spaces for transformative change: the seed sector and agricultural sustainability in Argentina

PATRICK VAN ZWANENBERG; ALMENDRA CREMASCHI; MARTIN OBAYA; ANABEL MARIN; VANESA LOWENSTEIN

ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY

RESILIENCE ALLIANCE

Año: 2018

1708-3087

Experimental spaces for exploring and nurturing processes of social-ecological transformation are of increasing interest, as a more interventionist, action-oriented approach to sustainability research and funding has emerged. In this paper we describe and reflect on our experience in Argentina facilitating an experimental ?transformative space? to understand and respond to developmental, social and ecological sustainability problems associated with growing concentration in agricultural seed markets. The process involved inviting a range of actors involved in governing, producing and using seeds to identify and deliberate on agricultural sustainability problems associated with the current structure and governance of seed systems, and to identify and begin to design social innovations that might help foster more sustainable seed and agricultural configurations. We argue that in facilitating such a process it is important to capture the diversity of perspectives on what constitute seed system functions, sustainability challenges and potential solutions and to work with and from those divergent perspectives in order to identify areas of actionable consensus and potential affinities between actors who otherwise understand and prioritize sustainability issues in different ways. We suggest that ideas for intervention that seek to exploit that common ground and create alliances of actors are more likely to mean that those ideas are politically and practically viable. We describe how an open source seed licensing system might address concerns about seed patents shared by domestic seed firms, small farmers and parts of government, that otherwise adopt different perspectives on desired, more sustainability futures, but would nevertheless open up space for more sustainable pathways of agricultural change.